Does FFXIV's combat system need an overhaul?

[Renathras]

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Correct on all counts, I think.

The only Job that really IS hyper-intuitive is SMN (though the tooltips are atrocious logging in at level 80 and getting on SMN the first time, starting at level 1 and going up to level 90 seems a lot more understandable since you aren't just thrown everything up to Phoenix all at once and having to figure out which things in your spellbook upgrade to what).

The Job widely panned by the community as "braindead" or "too easy". But it's the only Job more or less DESIGNED around the 2 min meta. A full Bahamut, 3 Primals, Phoenix, 3 Primals closes out a 2 minute loop with maybe one or two Ruin 3 fillers in there. Meaning it's a Job that teaches you - indirectly - about the 2 min meta. Because that's LITERALLY the only way to play it unless you're spamming Ruin and sitting on Bahamut/Pheonix CDs for some reason none could possibly fathom. Moreover, again something widely complained about, the Primals do roughly the same damage so there's no optimization other than "when is it safe to use Ifrit". While people complain about that, this again is a Job that actually works for players who only "read their tooltips"; there's no (or rather VERY small) difference between which Primal you use after Bahamut in the burst phase. And the Job has a 2 min CD, meaning the player can intuitively track when their "burst" is coming back up, and it lasts for 30 seconds, meaning the player doesn't have to be nearly as tight on the specific GCD they use it after. Even if they don't understand what the 2 min meta is or the concept of aligning with other Job's buffs, SMN works.

SMN is what Jobs would be like in this game if we relied on "read your tooltips" and made Jobs where "read your tooltips" got you the optimal rotation.

While some concepts are relatively easy - 1-2-3 combos, RDM's Dualcast and burst after 50/50 Mana, BLM's Fire/Ice back and forth - playing those Jobs at all optimally requires far FAR more than that. Then you get into cases like MNK which has a 21 (I believe it is) step combo (lining up the 1-2-3 4-5-6 1-2-6 4-5-6... it makes a closed loop after 21 steps), and that's ignoring when you use the three-of-one-kind to get the Nadi, which briefly bumps the overarching cycle. Learning RDM isn't just "build 50/50 using Dualcast back and forth and then doing your melee combo" but is based around having three melee combos per 2 minute period and trying to get two of them (rarely, part of three) into buff windows. I'm not sure who would even know what a "Transpose Line" is without either going to the Balance or having someone who has tell you about them.

So while some Jobs are easy to understand the basic CONCEPT of in broad brushstrokes, most that won't get you anywhere NEAR an optimal rotation. And that's some Jobs. Some aren't even that. BRD is kind of all over the place, even if it just has one GCD and the rest are "use these when they're up", it is all over the place to the point even most BRDs are annoyed with it at this point.

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Offhand, the only Jobs that teach you more or less the optimal rotation just by playing them/reading the tooltips are pst-6.3 PLD, WAR (arguably because it's so simple, though you won't learn Beast Gauge optimization), GNB to a point ("have enough gauge to use abilities, and use No Mercy, Double Down, Sonic Break, and [with ~0 skill speed] Gnashing Fang, Bow Shock, and Danger/Blasting Zone on CD, Burst Strike to avoid overcapping), WHM (AST if we're only talking the damage rotation, but not if we include the cards) and SGE (if only because Healer optimal rotations outside of SCH largely consist of "don't overcap and use on CD" and understanding Assize and to a lesser extent Earthly Star are damage abilities used on CD, the healing is just a bonus in the case of Assize and is slightly controllable in the case of Star) [SCH has a bit of optimization...but the difference between fully optimized and not is relatively small]*, and SMN. To a far lesser extent, DNC (if you unga its bunga), MCH (if you weave bunga during unga), and BRD (if you bunga all the unga as they pop randomly and ignore that song order actually matters), but you'll likely be more suboptimal with those (thankfully in the case of DNC and to an extent BRD, your party is doing the actual damage to help you out provided you're buffing them right...)

In other words, all the Jobs the community often attacks as being "braindead" and/or "too easy". The community that either lives on The Balance or, at the least, references it when a new expansion or major ability changing patch is released. Because with those resources, sure, some of those Jobs may seem easy; indeed, they are arguably the easier Jobs to do well on. BECAUSE they're largely intuitive and the nuance detail stuff is only needed to get a marginal difference on the top end. WITHOUT all those resources and reference? They're the only Jobs that are even approachable to play at an optimal level.

*Note for Healers I'm talking about their damage. Their healing kits can be easy and intuitive (WHM) or...less so (the others), though if you have the mind of a Healer player to even be playing them to begin with, those are MOSTLY understandable...as long as you read The Balance or a guide that tells you what an oGCD is. Because that's right: The game never tells you that "Action" actually IS DIFFERENT from "Spell". All of us HERE know it, but we didn't always. We've known it for so long and dealt with it for so long. But I started in 2.3. I remember thinking on SCH it was weird how Lustrate would go off right after a Physic or Bio but Adlo would not. On WHM, I noticed this same thing with Tetra vs Regen, both instant casts but only Tetra (in HW) would go off whenever I hit it while Regen wouldn't go off right away if I had just used Aero or another Regen. WEIRD, huh? It wasn't until SB - TWO WHOLE EXPANSIONS later - when I watched a YouTube guide on SCH, that I actually learned (a) what oGCD vs GCD actually was - that the abbreviations even existed and (b) that things like Dissipation that say "healing MAGIC" refer ONLY to the things marked "Spell", NOT the things marked "Action".

You reading this are like "lol, Ren, you're so stupid! _I_ figured that out the first hour I played the game! Heck, I figured it out on the character creation screen!"

If so, good for you.

But then there's everyone who isn't a 180 IQ super genius like yourself. In ShB, I was asked by people in my FC at the time to teach them how to heal. Some of these players had been playing since 1.X, but apparently, I was blowing away the healing metrics on whoever was running a parser at the time. I had them watch the video as well after asking them "Well, do you know what an oGCD is?" and getting a response of "What's an oGCD?" Then, depending on if they were playing WHM, SCH, or AST, I would tailor the discussion to their Job (because I have a fine mind for healing in general, but understanding the interplay and difference between GCD and oGCD is essential to how healing works in this game.)

While I never say "no one" (and try to avoid absolute statements), I'd wager MOST people don't understand what an oGCD is unless someone explains it to them or they read a guide external to the game. As far as I'm aware, the game itself never says anything, and other than "Huh, this spell goes off instantly every time when these others don't...why is that?", most people won't learn the difference on their own, much less those nuanced things like "Spell/Actionskill" vs "Actions" buffing tooltips.

And oGCD is a HUGE part of the game.

It's basically required for optimal gameplay or even anything approaching it. Even super-easy SMN is going to be doing less damage if the player is waiting 2.5 sec between casts including using things like Energy Drain or Ahk Mourn. And don't even get me started on triple weaves!

I would, in fact, argue that RIGHT after ABC, oGCD and weave understanding is the second most fundamental skill in this game to playing anywhere near optimally. If you know just those two things and otherwise roll your face across your keyboard, you'll at least get a Green in 24 mans, if not Blue, because so many players don't know the difference. It's that essential to doing good DPS and so many players don't understand it because the game literally tells you nothing and you HAVE to go outside of the game to learn what is a hyper-essential skill.

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I do love this game, but as far as "read your tooltips"; that's BS and we all know it.

No one figures out an optimal rotation on their own - not even SMN, since there IS some optimizing (albeit small) based on Primal order in burst and you MUST know the mechanics of the oGCD system the game has to get the most out of even it.

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Sorry for the rant, I just feel strongly when people are like "Most players are dumb/lazy, why don't they just read their tooltips, cause that's how I learned optimal play", because it's absolute total and unadulterated hogwash and we all know it. No, YOU didn't learn that way. No one did. You might not have used The Balance, but you read some guides somewhere or watched some YouTube ones that explained the basics to you, and you had AT LEAST that. Maybe you don't read The Balance every major patch, but you don't have to. You read it when you started playing your Job, and that, not you being the second coming of Einstein, is how you learned it.

Hell, even they didn't learn it from tooltips! The Balance folks have to use hours of parsing data - a third party and technially illegal tool - in order for them to figure it out. And I'd genuinely love to meet the first person that figured out how oGCDs work and started spreading that knowledge around the community/world.


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I shouldn't be TOO hard on it as there are a lot of things you CAN figure out on your own...kinda. Picking up WHM in ARR made perfect sense. There were no oGCD heals (other than Benediction; just PoM and Divine Seal and Fluid Aura if you felt frisky), Freecure gave you MP free Cure 2s back when...you know...MP mattered, and so on. But go from that to trying to play high end today? Not even in the same ballpark.

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Summary:

NOTE: This isn't me saying being bad is good or the game is impossible.

But it IS me saying how little you actually learn of your rotations and good play with the game itself. So bashing other players over it REALLY is unfair, and "just read your tooltips" to be good is absolute BS. "Read a guide" or "Watch YouTube guides" is how people get good in this game outside of some very few and rare individuals.